About Time: Obama Comes Out Swinging; Republicans Cry Foul

President Obama Returns To White House After 3-Day Bus TripWhat a refreshing change to see President Obama finally stand up to the obstructionist, Tea Party wing of the Republican party last night in his prime time address, announcing his intention to use executive authority to provide some relief to the millions of immigrants and their families in this country, who have been held in a state of unnecessary legal limbo and fear in a broken system that a broken Congress has refused to address for the past six years.

If you follow the game of politics, last night’s move by the President was a bold chess move in the political theater, one that has been sadly lacking in strategic thinking and courage among Democrats for some time.   Republicans have come away from their wins in the midterm elections bragging about how Americans have rejected President Obama’s policies and ideas, as if they have finally won over the approval they have always deserved.  Given the fact that their midterm wins occurred with the lowest voter turnout since 1942, it’s hard to think they actually believe their own hype about having political capital and a public supported agenda.  Given the fact that leading up to the midterms, Republican governors and state legislatures were methodically moving to suppress voter turnout through strict voter ID laws and other measures, it is reasonable to assume that they know there is no popular support for their ideas and policies.  It’s also no secret among political leaders of either party that the House of Clowns only enjoys its comfortable Republican majority because of extreme gerrymandering.

I’ve been very vocal in the past about how many Democrats are either too incompetent  to explain their case or too spineless to fight for what’s right, so I won’t rehash that now. But the President’s move last night should be understood in the context of how it came about.  Repeatedly, President Obama has tried to persuade Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.  And repeatedly, Republicans have rejected moving on the issue.  This Republican rejectionism extends back to former President George W. Bush as well, who was blocked by his own party from immigration reform.  But what is most absurd, is that the Senate did pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill, which Speaker John Boehner refused to bring to a vote in the House, because he feared upsetting the Tea Baggers who might want his do-nothing job.  Apparently, the bill would have had enough votes to pass in the House as well.  But the political thinking became that Republicans could take back the Senate in the recent midterms, which they did, and the House could gain more seats, which they did, so why give the President anything that could be viewed as victory before the midterms, or risk “alienating” the anti-immigration wing of the party?  That was the Republican political thinking.  The Democrats’ losing thinking at the time was that if Obama did anything through executive order regarding immigration, it might be used against them in the midterms.  The Republicans chose obstructionism, and fearing having to fight or explain their position at all, the Democrats chose cowardice.

In the mean time, millions of hard working immigrants and their families, have had to continue to live in the shadows of a broken system.

Obama finally did what he has threatened to do repeatedly:  he is using his limited executive authority to do some of what Congress refuses to do.  As they wanted, Mr. Obama waited until his party of chicken shits had their midterm election, and lost, to finally pull the trigger.  And the phony outrage about President Obama violating the Constitution, abusing his power, becoming the tyrant dictator that enslaves freedom loving white people, is on full, predictable, laughable display.

Obama gave a simple, concise, answer to all the bullshit and ballyhoo he knew would follow:

“To those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill.”

Now the Republicans will have do more that squawk.  In January, they will have the majority in both chambers, and the responsibility of producing instead of obstructing, of putting forth solutions instead of complaints.  Given the weakness and cowardice of their own leadership, such as Speaker Boehner, who can’t rally his own herd of Tea Party radicals, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.  Given Ted Cruz’s delusional presidential aspirations, it will also be interesting to see if Mr. McConnel can lead the Senate to pass another immigration bill.

For all their over the top, only to be taken seriously on Fox Propaganda News Channel hype, Republicans know that continuing to refuse to address our broken immigration system, or shutting down the government again out of spite, will hurt their chances of winning the next Presidential election.  It may play well in Mexican hating states of the Deep South on local election levels, but nationally, the Republican leadership knows too extreme of a response to President Obama’s reasonable and legal actions towards immigration, will only destroy their chances at making inroads to the Latin American voter community.  The next Republican nominee may have to go find a “binder full of immigrants” to replace the “binder full of women” that Mitt Romney hoped would win him voters.

Republicans were hoping for aquience from a weakened President Obama after the midterm losses.  Mitch McConnell’s stated goal in 2008 of making his party’s number one priority making sure that President Obama was denied a second term, failed, but not without a record number of fillibusters and a government shutdown as proof of effort.  Democrats’ strategy of rolling over for the Republicans at every term and then trying to sound like a Republican in the elections, also failed.  Obama’s capitulation and efforts at compromise to an extreme, obstructionist party also failed.  Now it appears that with nothing left politically to lose, he has found his courage, and voice again.  Let’s hope he spends the next two years fighting for what’s right, instead of having bourbon with Mitch McConnell and playing golf with John Boehner, hoping to find “common ground” in what has always been a wild goose chase in a party of haters.

 

Bridge to Nowhere: Cowards Begin Bribe Campaign

Sanders new It hasn’t taken long for the “business friendly” wing of the Democratic party to mobilize against the few good, progressive Democrats in office in an effort to quell any momentum towards what Wall Street and other uber wealthy, elite establishment power brokers call “populism.”

After last week’s loss of the Senate to Republicans and the gaining of more Republican seats in the House, the Clintonites and her Wall Street cronies that have corrupted and infected the Democratic party, are trying to pull a fast one.  After promoting disastrous candidates with some of the worst losing strategies employed in recent memory, such as Allison Grimes in Kentucky, the corporatists are moving quickly to override and silence the progressive wing of Democrats.  They fear that honest and accurate criticism among liberals who point out why the Democrats lost so big, could damage their chances of securing 2 years ahead of time, their already anointed puppet, Hillary Clinton.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has been winning the support of grassroots liberals and progressives for some time now, with her economic message of fairness for average Americans and her criticism of the financial industry and its criminals on Wall Street who wrecked the global economy, got promoted to President Obama’s cabinet, received tax payer bailouts, multi-million dollar bonuses, and quickly moved to gut any meaningful reform to prevent future Big Bank created crises.

Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, an Independent who is considering a run for president as either an Independent or a Democrat, has also been inspiring hope in jaded voters who desperately hope that someone in mainstream politics is still willing to fight for average Americans and popular causes.

A quick list of what the mainstream media always calls a “populist” message, under  thinly veiled contempt for any candidate who dares challenge the corporate status quo of America’s decline into a Third World style economic system, include such radical ideas as:  raising the minimum wage, healthcare for all, strengthening Social Security, raising taxes on the wealthy and making corporations pay their fair share of taxes instead of domestic spending cuts for the working class and the poor, and less spending on the giant military industrial complex that has led to an endless “war on terror.”

It shows a real contempt for democracy when the media begins its propaganda campaign to smear candidates who gain recognition for their, gasp, “popular” ideas that resonate with voters.  The smear campaign usually starts out slowly, with phony admiration coupled with the subtle message of “they can’t win.”  This has been the case with such past candidates as Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and Ron Paul, among others.  When the “popularity” of such candidates rises to an uncomfortable level among the corporate elites who run both political parties, the more overt criticism begins.  Candidates are then described as “protectionists,” “far right,” “far left,” “radical,” “isolationists,” or “crazy.”  If these labels fail to stick, the media then employs its tactic of a widespread media blackout.  The candidates are underreported, if reported at all, or ridiculed, and forbidden, of course, to participate in the presidential debates. This is done to maintain the illusion of choice, when the choice is among one of the two Big Business Party’s two choices.

In an article in the New York Times today titled “Spurred by Midterm Losses, Liberal and Moderate Democrats Square Off Over Strategy,” another strong progressive voice, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio has this to say:

““Too many Democrats are too close to Wall Street, too many Democrats support trade agreements that outsource jobs and too many Democrats are too willing to cut Social Security — and that’s why we lose elections,” and “The message I heard from all of them was: the Democratic Party should fight for the little guy.”

And how have the Hillary zombies and puppet masters of the Democratic party responded so far?  They have created a new “position” just for Elizabeth Warren, which the Times article claims is designed to “help provide a bridge to liberals.”  Salon magazine today reports of Mrs. Warren’s new position as Senate Democratic Message-maker in an article titled “R.I.P., Elizabeth Warren ’16 fantasy:  Why she’s really (probably) not running for president now.”

Mrs. Clinton, and Democrat “centrists” – a term meaning further to the right and beholden to the needs of the top 1 percent instead of most Americans – believe that giving lip service to the concerns of voters expressed and championed by bold leaders such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Sherrod Brown, will be enough to ensure a Clinton, Corporate, War Machine nomination in 2014.  These cowards are attempting to bribe Mrs. Warren into not running by giving her a new bullshit title.  I sincerely hope voters of all political stripes see through this propaganda and support candidates with conviction, instead of the dynasty heads like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush on the Republican side of the Two Party Oligarchy.

 

Making Sense of the Midterms

Clinton smilingThis past Tuesday’s midterm elections were entirely predictable for a few reasons, but the interpretation of the results has been a mix of misguided blame by the losers, faulty logic from media pundits, and delusional misunderstanding from the jubilant winners.

Lets start with what was predictable.  Going on the historical record of the past midterm elections that have occurred in the sixth year of a two term president, the President’s party loses seats, and the opposition party gainst seats.  The reasons are easy to generalize, and the details need not be debated in these cases.  Most Presidents leave office with much less enthusiasm and a more negative approval rating than when they started.  Given the broken political system in the United States in which the will of the people is seldom carried out, regardless of which party wins  or has the majority, any hope generated is routinely destroyed by piss poor performance and the reality of the limitations of the presidency, as well as current events.

Of course the media has been telling voters for months who was going to win this time around, and who was going to lose.  Though predictable just from the historical record, the continuous drumbeat of the 24 hour news/propaganda cycle surely has some effect on voter turnout.  This is also routine in American politics.  The media tells people how they will vote, who will win, over and over again, assisting history to repeat itself with the extra nudge of self-fulfilling prophecy.  This is one of the media’s standard operating procedures in the vast propaganda system, and goes a long way towards explaining why public opinion polls continually show that Americans don’t trust either political party and say they would vote for a different alternative, but never do in any significant amount when there is a third option. Independent presidential candidates with credentials and popularity are not allowed in the presidential debates, and are virtually blacked out by all the media outlets for coverage, except for negative reporting and the repeating assurances by the media that it is only a contest between the democrat and republican, and any other vote is a wasted vote.

Given the role of the media coverage, Obama’s low approval ratings, and the public’s even lower approval rating of congress, the lowest ever in modern times, it is no surprise the the incumbent democrats lost.

It’s also no surprise that republicans are claiming  to have won a “mandate,” and that the election results are because of voters’ rejection of the President  and his party’s policies.  But this is not true.  What is true, sadly, is that polls continually show that large numbers of voters often don’t know where the candidate they support stands on issues.  This is also the intended result of the propaganda system.  Candidates are marketed with vague slogans like “reform” or “hope” or “change,” and in the end, the hope is not realized, there is no reform, and little changes.  The incumbents are punished by the losers of the last election who are more likely to turn out to vote to say “I told you so!” and vote out the incumbent, and the voters who supported the incumbent, already disappointed and reinforced by the media of the inevitability of losing this time around, are less motivated to even show up to vote.

But to say that Americans have rejected the stand of the President on major issues is far from accurate, and easily proven by any number of examples.  The press has been misinterpreting the midterm results with changes in voters’s political views on issues.  It is hard to believe that the tv pundits actually believe this falsehood, when numerous examples abound showing this is not the case.  One glaring example comes to mind immediately:  the ballot initiative on raising the minimum wage.

In all four states where the ballot asked voters to chose whether or not to raise the minimum wage in the state, the voters voted an overwhelming yes, by at least double digits in each state.  And these four states, Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, are all red states.  If there is one simple policy difference between the two parties that is right in front of voters’ faces, it is the minimum wage position.  Republicans are vehemently opposed to raising it, with some prominent republican lawmakers and pundits claiming we don’t need a minimum wage at all.  The republicans have filibustered and blocked the vote to raise the federal wage repeatedly, and recently.  I have argued that democrats should use this as an easily understandable position that should demonstrate which of the two parties gives just a little bit of a damn more about the plight of the working class and working poor.  Yet voters in the red state of Alaska, who not too long ago voted Sarah Palin as governor, went to the polls and voted by a whopping margin of 61 percent in favor of raising the minimum wage to 31 percent against.  Voters in the Southern, Obama hatin’ country of Arkansas, voted 65 percent in favor, 35 percent against.  With such large numbers in favor of raising the minimum wage in these red states, it is somewhat amazing that in the same voting booth, with the issue right in front of their eyes, these voters still support the party who never supports raising it.

In Kentucky, Obamacare has been one of the country’s success stories, thanks in large part to the democratic governor who chose the medicaid expansion and set up the state’s own healthcare exchange, which helped them avoid the botched rollout that plagued the national healthcare exchange in the beginning.  Polls in Kentucky indicate that Obamacare is popular and appreciated by all of the newly insured citizens of the state – so long as they aren’t told or reminded that it’s Obamacare.  Senator Mitch McConnell was actually able to say during a debate with Allison Grimes that he wanted to repeal all of Obamacare, but that Kentucky could keep it’s “website” – the healthcare exchange operating under Obamacare.  He also said Kentucky chose to expand Medicaid, and could keep that too if they liked.  What he didn’t tell them that was the website wasn’t just a Kentucky magical “website” and that Medicaid expansion in Kentucky was funded mostly by the federal government as part of Obamacare.  This is yet another glaring example of voters seeming to not know what their candidate actually stands for, since they enjoy the new Affordable Care Act that Mr. McConnell wants to repeal all together, so long as it’s kept quiet that it’s actually Obamacare they are enjoying.

Polls also show most Americans like Social Security and Medicare and want to keep it.  Yet these same voters support the party that is salivating to dismantle both programs.

And now for the misguided excuses of the democrats who lost.

The simple answer that losing democrats are giving is that they lost because of President Obama’s approval ratings.  But these democrats defeated themselves.  With the republican narrative being that everything wrong in the country right now is the fault of the President and his party’s policies, losing democrats effectively agreed with this narrative by going out of their way to distance themselves from the President and try to show how unlike the rest of their party they are.  There could not be a more direct path to losing than by agreeing with your opponent that your party and President suck, that you have failed so far, but please come and vote for me.

The epitome, the poster child, the biggest embracer of this losing strategy by a Democrat this time around, is by far, the most pathetic and pitiful excuse for a candidate I have seen in a long time:  Allison Grimes of Kentucky.

I have ranted previously on this blog about how infuriatingly incompetent of a campaign that Allison Grimes was running, and that she deserved to lose.  Mitch McConnell was vulnerable, and it was her election to lose.  She did so with flying colors.  Instead of choosing to inform Kentuckians that all of the new benefits they were getting in healthcare coverage and protection, and the magical “website” and Medicaid expansion in the state, was in fact the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, she chose cowardice.  She ran a tv ad that started out with her saying “I am not Obama” and shooting a gun.  Did she think that would win over republican voters in her state, or the thousands of citizens in her state who were enjoying access to healthcare for the first time?  Apparently, she did.  One wonders if she was smoking crack with Canada’s famous crack smoking mayor before she chose to not answer the simple question of who she voted for.  She appears to have actually thought it was better to tell the media and voters that she prefered to keep who she voted for secret instead of stating the obvious, that she voted for Obama and voted for Democrats – you know, the party she belongs to and was running as to get elected.

An optimistic idiot from the New York Times wrote an article called “Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren’t All Gloom.”  Towards the end of the article, she pointed out:  ” The Clintons worked hard on behalf of Alison Lundergan Grimes, a candidate for Senate in Kentucky, and Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and were somewhat startled by their double-digit losses.”

That Mrs. Clinton and her team of experts were “startled” by their double digit losses, at least gives me hope that Hillary Clinton is more than vulnerable in the primaries for her presidential bid.  It should also be a wakeup call to progressives, liberals, and independents who don’t want a republican president in 2016.  Even if Hillary is elected, she is nothing more than a war hawk, neo-conservative, Margaret Thatcher clone, phony hope disguised as a democrat and as a person who actually cares about average Americans.

In contrast, the enthusiasm being generated by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, is the kind of enthusiasm that will actually motivate people to vote for them over a republican for president next time.  They are doing this by saying what they stand for, an elementary lesson that should have been obvious to the party known for it’s lack of spine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Idiots, American Cowards

LOUISVILLE2-articleLarge-v2The woman in the above picture appeared recently in a New York Times article titled “In Kentucky, Health Law Helps Voters But Saps Votes.”  It sums up with glaring clarity, two things that are particularly frustrating for for disenfranchised, cynical or apathetic voters:  1) a large number of people vote for the “image” or “brand” of a politician, seeming to completely ignore the fact that the politician they are supporting represents the opposite of what the voter believes or supports; and 2) politicians – especially democrats – are too big of cowards to stand up for what they believe, choosing to tell voters what they think the voter wants to hear, even if it is not the truth or what the politician believes.  The result is entrenched, dysfunctional government that continues to represent the interests of giant corporations and extreme wealth, while the general population continues to fight against each other, failing to see who really controls the levers of power and keeps the standard of living in the United States of America on a steady decline towards Third World style poverty.

With mid-term elections coming up, the mainstream U.S. media gives daily updates on projections of which of the two corporate owned parties will have control of the Senate and House after the November votes are counted.  The republicans already have control of the House of Representatives, and it doesn’t look like the democrats have much of a chance of retaking it.  This is in large part due to the extreme gerrymandering of voting districts in each state, a process in which  voting districts’ boundaries have been redrawn over and over to the careful calculations that guarantee for the most part, that the incumbent party maintains power.  Although both parties have played a role in this, the result is that in the House, republicans have more seats than the total number of voters suggest that they should, much like a presidential candidate can win the Electoral votes and presidency while losing the popular vote.  This distortion and disservice to democracy based on the simple principle of majority rule is passively accepted, with democrats grumbling and blaming the system while continuing to do nothing meaningful to change it.  It has also blown up in the republicans’ faces, who at first seemed to benefit from this newfound means of controlling the House without popular support:  the rise of the radical Tea Party, funded by billionaires across many states from Oligarchs like the Koch brothers.  In republican primaries now, especially across the South, once thought “safe” seats are being challenged by a new class of clowns that have no interests in governing, only obstructionism.  House Speaker John Boehner and recently defeated Eric Cantor have learned this lesson the hard way:  nothing can get done, compromise being nearly impossible thanks the new freshman class of Tea Baggers that retook the House from democrats at a terrible cost to everyone.

The Senate operates a little differently, with each state getting two senators, determined by a state wide popular vote instead of a gerrymandered illusion.  As a result, the democrats have had control of the Senate for sometime.  But what has that been worth?  Thanks to the democracy killing process known as the filibuster, in which 60 votes are required instead of 51 to pass legislation, very little has gotten done in this chamber either.  When Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who is up for reelection, said publicly after Barack Obama was first elected president, that his number one priority as Senate Minority Leader would be to deny President Obama a second term, he was not exaggerating.  One would have thought at the time, with the world economy nearly collapsing thanks to the recklessness and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, that his number one priority would have been to work with the newly elected president to solve the country’s problems.  But instead, Mr. McConnell and his minority in the Senate invoked a historical, record breaking number of filibusters to derail any legislation from passing.  If it were not for the democrats’ temporary “super majority” in the Senate in Obama’s first two years in office, nothing would have gotten passed, especially the Affordable Care Act.

Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid, had more than one chance to use a procedural maneuver in the Senate to change the filibuster rule, but chose cowardice instead of leadership.  As I have said more than once over the past few years and in my blogs, I believe his cowardice was rooted in his and other Senate democrats number one priority, to maintain some level of power when they inevitably lose control of the Senate.  There were reports in the newspapers from time to time that Mr. Reid was so fed up with republican obstructionism, that he was on the verge of having the Senate change the fillibuster rule.  But, it was also reported, that when he almost grew a set of balls, there were enough neutered, career politician democrats in the Senate that were against the change.  Because they want to keep their near, do-nothing job with the right to obstruct and override majority rule, when they become the minority again.  In other words, they value their right to do nothing when in the minority, over their opportunity to do what is right when they are in the majority.

This gets us to the important point of, what does it matter, who is in control?  Well, we can start with the very narrow field of the new healthcare law.  Obama Care, as it is generally called in the public domain, or The Affordable Health Care Act, has been the whipping board of Obama critics since it’s conception.  Well, it’s actual conception began with the republican idea of keeping our dysfunctional, ineffective, super-expensive health care system in the hands of the private health insurance companies.   The republican conception that was eventually adopted by the Obama administration, began as Romney Care in Massachusetts.  Most Americans favored a single payer system like all other industrialized, wealthy countries in the world enjoy, where everyone is covered universally.  Many liberals and progressives, myself included, were furious that Obama’s team immediately abandoned any thoughts of pursuing such a permanent solution to our healthcare crisis, but in the end, most of us thought, the new system is better than the old one, even though the same vulture insurance companies are still profiting from acting as a go-between for patients and doctors, and still causing the massive, costly, confusing pile of paperwork.  But, there are now new consumer protections, such as not allowing insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, etc.  The benefits are numerous and life changing for millions.  Despite the trouble plagued rollout of the national health exchange, millions of Americans have now gotten more affordable coverage, thanks to more competition among insurers, and subsidies from the federal government to help middle and lower income people afford private insurance.  The law also helped expand Medicaid by expanding the poverty line qualifying people for it. Unfortunately for millions of Americans still living in republican controlled states, many governors have declined the expansion of Medicaid for their state, even though Washington has offered to pay for the cost of new patients for the first three years, and 90 percent until 2020.  Out of spite for President Obama, many lower income people, still too poor to afford private insurance, but not poor enough according to their governors or state legislators, many of these people will suffer and die.

That people will tolerate this is shameful. That voters will continue to vote for it, even if it is themselves that need health care, is baffling and infuriating.

Take Robin Evans, a 49 year old Kentucky resident in the New York Times article, who reportedly works at an EBay warehouse making 9 dollars an hour, who recently got Medicaid in Kentucky after going uninsured with multiple health issues for many years.  Fortunately for Mrs. Evans, Kentucky has a democratic governor, and even though she is quoted in the article as saying that she is “tickled to death” to have Medicaid finally, she will not be voting for democrats.  Her brilliant reasoning:   “Born and raised Republican,” she said of herself. “I ain’t planning on changing now.”

Here is a link to the article in which the intellectual giant is quoted from:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/us/politics/kentucky-elections-obama-health-care-act.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

With stunning ignorance or bigotry, or whatever would motivate such a dumbass  redneck like Mrs. Evans, pictured above, to still vote for Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell, who has campaigned over and over about wanting to get rid of ObamaCare, is enough to make you want to bang your head into a fencepost you can’t win an argument with.

But surely most people like Robin Evans can be reasoned with.  More maddening, however, is many democrats, especially in red and Southern states, are too big of cowards or too pathetic to even muster a fight with the truth on their side.  Mr. McConnell’s female opponent, Alison Grimes, who once seemed to have a decent chance of defeating him, is running away from ObamaCare, and instead airing television commercials of her shooting a gun, while proudly proclaiming that she is not Obama, and loves the coal industry.  The motto for worthless democrats like her seems to be “if you can’t beat them, and are too scared to debate ideas, then imitate them.”  Since the airing of her manly shooting of a gun, a pissing match war of meaningless words and gestures has resulted in Mrs. Grimes challenging Mr. McConnell to a contest at a shooting range.  To think that she will be able to persuade voters that she is more macho and as big of a supporter of no gun laws as Mitch McConnell, instead of making the easy, uncomplicated argument that ObamaCare is good for Kentucky, with thousands of examples, proves that she is unfit to call herself a democrat, unfit to lead, unfit for office, and has absolutely no chance of unseating Mitch McConnell.

Here is a link to her tv ad, copy and paste to your browser for a good laugh and cry for the monumental stupidity of American politics:

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/alison-lundergan-grimes-shooting-ad-110954.html

So this is the best Democrats can do in red states?  If it is, and Americans are willing to hand the Senate back over to the Republicans, then we might as well go hunting with former Vice President Dick Cheney, and let him shoot us in the face.  It wouldn’t be much dumber than the recently insured Robin Evans saying that she wasn’t about to change her republican voting ways now, no matter how illogical and detrimental to her well being it is.

I can understand a voter not supporting either of the two corrupted political parties and choosing to vote for an independent or third party.  But to think there is no difference between the two pathetic parties is a dangerous position, for even though those differences may be small, as the new healthcare law demonstrates, it can be the difference between life and death.

At the risk of talking down to my audience that may disagree with me, I have to end this with a recent quote from Bill Maher:

I understand why the richest 1% vote Republican, they deserve those votes. They represent the richest 1% perfectly. Anybody else who does, just corporate America’s useful idiots.”

 

 

Finally, Syria, Here We Come

syria 2On the eve of the September 11th terrorist attacks on United States soil 13 years ago, President Barack Obama addressed the nation in a prime time television speech to rally support for more open ended war.  He became the fourth consecutive U.S. president to announce plans to bomb Iraq, and made it clear that his administration now plans to expand this “war on terror” into Syria. It is also the one year anniversary in which Obama first addressed the nation about his plans to bomb Syria because of their alleged use of chemical weapons, though those plans were put on hold for various reasons. In the tradition of his predecessor, President George W. Bush, Mr. Obama framed this as protecting America from future terrorist attacks: in other words, more pre-emptive strikes.  His rhetoric was remarkably similar to the fear mongering of the former Bush administration, though toned down slightly from the bold face lies of America facing “a mushroom cloud” in the form of a nuclear attack.  But in essence, Obama was selling us a war in Syria, just as W. Bush sold us a war in Iraq, under the guise of protecting us from future attacks.

In the president’s own words last night, he acknowledged that currently, ISIL (or ISIS) does not have immediate plans to attack us:

“If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies.”

From these two cleverly contrived sentences, where Obama says ISIS “could” threaten the United States, and that “we have not yet detected. . .” planned attacks, the president stokes fears already being promoted in the U.S. mainstream press, that some American and European citizens have joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria already, and “could try to return to their home countries and carry out deadly attacks.”

So “if” we don’t go on the offensive, ISIS “could” attack us, though we haven’t “yet” any evidence of this.

Sounds like more pre-emptive, fearmongering “bullshit” to me.

On my blog last year on June 18th, I wrote an article titled “War All the Time: Syria, Here We Come” where I speculated and warned about U.S. plans to intervene more aggressively in the civil war in Syria.  By September 13 of last year, I called the Obama administration’s calling off of plans to bomb Assad, due to Syria’s agreement to disarm their chemical weapons stockpile a “pause in our march to war in Syria.”  My prediction is proving true. Turns out that was approximately a one year pause.  Last year, our need to bomb in Syria was framed as a “humanitarian” intervention because of the innocent civilians suffering there, after chemical weapons attacks allegedly launched by Assad’s regime (this has still not been proven, and there is more evidence now that suggests this was a lie).  This year, capitalizing on the widely broadcast brutality of the be-heading of two American journalists by ISIS in a video released by the group, the need to bomb Syria is now based on the supposed grave and future danger that ISIS will pose to the United States, “if left unchecked.”

Graphic images and videos of deplorable violence, such as the ISIS be-headings of journalists, move public opinion.  The continuous talk among American pundits and politicians about the brutality of ISIS, along with self-promoting videos by the group being posted on the internet, have no doubt moved American opinion more towards war. Recent polling from CNN, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other news organizations all show around 60 percent of Americans favoring airstrikes against ISIS.  The desire for justice and revenge is understandable, but it is cynically exploited by U.S. and world leaders all the time to rally one’s tribe, and dehumanize one’s foe.  Hillary Clinton is certainly aware of this, when in addition to blaming world opposition to Israel’s latest slaughter in Gaza on anti-Semitism, she complained that Hamas was inviting journalists into Gaza to view the carnage, and that it was “the old P.R. problem that Israel has.”

The majority of Americans don’t know much about the civil war in Syria, and the mainstream media goes out of its way to avoid providing too much detail or perspective.  The facts and details are readily available in the newspapers for people willing to look more deeply into the conflict, but most people get their news from television, where pundits dutifully promote the propaganda of our politicians, often times allowing their blatant lies to go unchallenged, and repeated over and over again as if they are facts. The most recent example I saw was last night on MSNBC’s coverage after the president’s speech, in which Senator Sore Loser, John McCain, again told Andrea Mitchell that part of ISIS’s gains in Iraq was because Obama had refused to leave a residual force in Iraq.  I’ve explained so many times now that I’ve lost count, how this is simply not true:  Bush negotiated the withdrawal before Obama took office; Obama wanted to leave a residual force but Iraq wouldn’t accept it.  This lie was uttered again by a supposedly credible official who almost became president instead of Obama.  McCain’s lie was unchallenged, again, as usual.  And of course, McCain failed to mention that the reason we needed to keep a military presence in Iraq to keep the peace was because we invaded Iraq in the first place, under W. Bush’s leadership, with a “yes” vote by McCain.  Hillary Clinton spews the same line of bullshit in her never ending quest to become president.  She too voted for the Iraq invasion, that left a power vacuum for Al Qaeda in Iraq, to fill.  Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq that was sold on the lies of “weapons of mass destruction,” there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq.  ISIS is now the group formally known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, as acknowledged by all.  But the warmongers’ narrative starts with “we shouldn’t have pulled out of Iraq (10 years later)” instead of the obvious “we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq in the first place.”

The Syrian civil war is a proxy war more than a civil war, with many allies and Western powers contributing to the horrific bloodshed by 3 years of arming numerous “opposition” groups, composed of many of the “terrorist” that we claim to fear.  Until recently, President Obama has appeared to want to keep the U.S. out of as much direct intervention in the war as possible, amid cries from McCain, Senator Lindsay Graham, and his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for more involvement, and more arming of the various groups attempting to overthrow Assad.  But his apparent reluctance aside, Obama did previously say that “Assad must go” when he was last contemplating bombing him.  This is the root of the civil war in Syria, the desire of Assad’s enemies, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the U.S., the U.K and other allies, to see his regime toppled.  What has resulted is a melting pot of Islamic extremist and foreign fighters, fueled with money, arms and training from Assad’s enemies, destroying the country of Syria and ruining hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.

Now, part of Obama’s strategy for the proclaimed goal of degrading and destroying ISIS, is more direct U.S.  engagement and support of the “Free Syrian Army.”  His previous concerns about not being able to differentiate who we might be arming to overthrow Assad have been set aside.  Now U.S. officials are claiming to have “vetted” the opposition groups that are fighting Assad.  And don’t worry, there will be no American combat troops, or “boots on the ground,” not counting of course the more than 1000 “advisors” on the ground already, with more to come.  We will just bomb and advise, and help train the failed Iraq security forces that we already trained once, and arm the Kurds who in previous years we were complicit in their slaughter from both Saddam Hussein and Turkey, and we will aid the now “vetted” opposition forces in Syria.

All Obama is asking for is congressional blessing – which he claims he doesn’t need, just wants, and more money from U.S. taxpayers to fund this new conflict which he, his administration officials, and others say will last years – not months.  And of course he wants the backing of America’s citizens, whom ” our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden” because ” we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity.”  To make us feel good about the bombing campaign already begun again in Iraq, that was framed partly as a humanitarian mission to save refugees trapped on a mountain top in Iraq from ISIS advances, Mr. Obama told us: ” here’s what one of them said: “We owe our American friends our lives. Our children will always remember that there was someone who felt our struggle and made a long journey to protect innocent people.”

Of course, that “long journey” was made over a decade ago when the U.S. first invaded Iraq.  You may also recall that the United States bombed Libya three years ago for the “humanitarian purposes” of protecting innocent civilians from being “slaughtered” by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces.  This humanitarian mission in which we helped our allies conduct, of course led to the desired result:  the once friendly dictator Qaddafi was overthrown.  Specifically, Qaddafi was murdered in the streets by an angry mob, and that act of graphic violence was also captured on video and broadcast widely on the internet, and hailed as a victory for Libyans, thanks to benevolent help from the U.S. and other Western allies like France and Britain.   Just two days ago, the New York Times reported on the wonderful new life Libyans are enjoying, with a third of its population, almost 2 million people, seeking refuge in Tunisia from the horrific violence now unleashed since our humanitarian intervention. Details of that success surely merit as much attention as Obama’s quote from the grateful Iraqis saved from the mountaintop by us, so here is a link to that article that you may copy and paste to your browser:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/world/africa/libya-refugees-tunisia-tripoli.html?mabReward=RI%3A7&module=WelcomeBackModal&contentCollection=Middle%20East&region=FixedCenter&action=click&src=recg&pgtype=article

It will be interesting to see how congress decides to act on President Obama’s request for support for more years, blood and treasure to be spent to “protect” us from this new terrorist group that supposedly makes Al Qaeda look like choir boys.  The republican leadership in both the Senate and House seem reluctant to want to even call a vote.  Senator Fish Face, Mitch McConnell and the Weeper of the House, John Boehner, have both offered nothing but criticism of Obama’s handling of it so far, but offering no specific ideas of their own, and no promise of a vote for congress to do what was once considered its constitutional duty – since the Constitution actually says it is their duty and power – to declare war.  They’d much rather play Monday morning quarterback than stake a position on the eve of mid-term elections.  Of course, McCain and Graham can be counted on as a “yes” vote.  Hillary Clinton is already saying we should have gone to war sooner.  Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein of California was recently on “Meet the Press” on August 31, joining in on blaming Obama for ISIS, saying “I think I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious. Maybe in this instance, too cautious.”  Apparently, less cautious leadership like hers is what’s needed – after all, she was decisive when she voted “yes” for the Iraq War, just as Hillary Clinton, and all the other current warmongers did.  Former Vice President, Darth Vader (sometimes called by his maiden name of Dick Cheney) met with G.O.P. leaders Tuesday, a day before Obama’s national address, to criticise and blame the current mess on Obama.  It’s simply amazing that so many of the assholes who voted for the Iraq War, both republicans and democrats (Hillary and Feinstein) are blaming  the current crises in Iraq and Syria on the Obama administration and offering their advice of “war! war!” as if we should listen to them again.

The question is, will Americans buy into the propaganda being offered by the current president, again, to start a pre-emptive war to protect us from terrorism?  Not enough Americans were sold on bombing Syria last year for humanitarian purposes, so this year Obama is selling the tried and true currency of fear.  Don’t buy into it.  Its just more of the same old bullshit lies about our true motivations for war, dressed up by the lofty words of a better spoken president.

Warmonger: Hillary

HillaryJoining the chorus of republican sore losers and neo-cons, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been making headlines recently by blaming President Obama for the crises in Iraq and Syria, and vociferously defending the state of Israel for it’s recent murderous rampage in Gaza.

Hillary Clinton has always been known as a foreign policy hawk, and I have always contended that she is a warmonger, but she has gone out of her way in recent interviews to explain just how hawkish she is, and how things might have been better in the world right now if the Obama Administration had listened to her more often.  Of course, Mrs. Clinton is also posturing for her all but certain presidential run, apparently planning to run as the pro-war, pro-intervention, militaristic hawk. . . as a democrat.  This seems an odd choice, since part of what swept Obama into office was his anti-war positions, like his opposition to the Iraq War.

But Hillary Clinton has always been pro-war.  Even among republican lawmakers, she is viewed as a foreign policy hawk.  Yet somehow many democrat, liberal and progressive voters seem unaware of this, or unwilling to admit it.  But her record as a senator, and as Secretary of State, lend sincerity to her aggressive, militaristic rhetoric.  On the issue of war and aggression, Hillary Clinton is making it very clear that if she becomes president, she will be more aggressive with use of U.S. military power.  As for Israel, and its’ Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, she appears to be pledging her future allegiance and U.S. support, undermining the Obama Administration and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, as their relations with Israel are strained at the moment.

True to her form, she has timed her comments based on recent polling, telling people what she thinks they want to hear.  When she retired as Secretary of State, and Obama’s foreign policy favorability ratings were comfortably higher, she was all smiles in a joint television interview with the president, highlighting how great they worked together, etc.  Now, amid multiple international conflicts, from Ukraine to Iraq and Syria, Mr. Obama’s foreign policy polls have been sliding, as would be the case regardless of who happens to be president at the moment.  What she is overlooking in the polls, however, is that the majority of Americans, regardless of how they are rating Obama’s handling of foreign policy, don’t want more U.S. military intervention over seas.

The recent interview of Mrs. Clinton by Jefferey Goldberg on August 10th in The Atlantic is well worth reading, especially for supporters of her for president in 2016, who may not realize how right wing and aligned with the neo-cons she is on foreign policy.  It is also especially worth reading if you think the United States should use its leverage as Israel’s only true friend and largest supplier of military supplies and money, to force Israel into a binding peace agreement with the Palestinians, or if you are concerned with the death and carnage being carried out in Gaza.  Mrs. Clinton makes it clear in this interview that she is a supporter of more robust United States involvement in wars, is against reasonable bargaining with Iran over nuclear issues, and is fiercely unapologetic for Israel’s occupation and brutalization of Palestine.

Many of the things she has to say in this interview are absolutely astounding, so let’s start with what she has to say about the current crisis in Iraq.  The Obama Administration has been bombing the militant group I.S.I.S. that has taken over large territory and cities in Iraq and Syria.  The bombings, or “airstrikes” in the sanitized language of officials, has been done partially under the guise of “humanitarian” reasons, such as the refugees from Kurdistan trapped in the Mountains after fleeing I.S.I.S.  This was begun with President Obama assuring Americans, whom he knows have no interests in more war, that he was not going to let the United States get pulled into another Iraq War, emphasizing that although we are sending advisers and conducting bombings, no combat troops, or “boots on the ground” will be sent, maintaining that Iraq needs a political solution to it’s problem.   It appears that U.S. officials feared the takeover of Kurdistan, or at least it’s capital, and the takeover of Baghdad.  Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) and Baghdad have control of huge oil reserves and the Iraq government , and the loss of these areas’s enormous resources and geopolitical location is not something the U.S. is going to be willing to lose, especially after we went through the trouble to invade Iraq in the first place.  Hillary Clinton now has the nerve to actually blame President Obama for I.S.I.S.’s gains in Iraq, for a couple of reasons, neither of which are true.

When the “civil war” in Syria began over two years ago, supposedly by internal unrest, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Britain, and others quietly began arming and providing “non-lethal” aid to the rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad.  Whatever may have started out as some grassroots rebellion in Syria, soon morphed into a full on war with the explicit intentions of overthrowing Assad’s regime, with many foreign fighters and jihadis flocking to the conflict.  Iran and Russia, allied with Syria, began countering the outside help of the rebels with help to Assad.  For a while, it had looked as if Assad’s government might collapse, leading Obama to make the proclamation that “Assad must go.”  When it became apparent that Assad was likely not going to be overthrown, at least anytime soon, there were calls among warmongers in our country, like Senator Sore Loser John McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham, for Obama to provide more direct arms and lethal aid to assist the rebels and foreign fighters.  It was reported in various newspapers at the time that the C.I.A.  was already helping “coordinate” some of the arms donated to the fighters from countries like Saudi Arabia in addition to the supposedly non-lethal aid.  President Obama ultimately decided against more arming, citing his concerns that the U.S. and it’s allies couldn’t guarantee that the weapons wouldn’t end up in the hands of terrorist groups, as the civil war was attracting huge numbers of foreign fighters trying to take over Syria.  Obama had good reason for this concern, as it was obvious that the “rebellion” against Assad had become a proxy war between U.S. Gulf State allies, and Iran and Russia.  And it was well known that many terrorist groups were happy to be taking weapons from whoever would provide them.  It was also reported at this time that Secretary of State Clinton had favored more direct involvement in the war in Syria, more arming of rebels, more U.S. firepower.  She was the voice of the interventionalist hawks.

Fast forward to the present, and a new terrorist group known as I.S.I.S., has taken over a large swatch of Syria and Iraq.  It’s hard to determine from the press or from the self serving statements of politicians, just what percentage of I.S.I.S. was originally backed by the U.S. or it’s allies, but it’s clear that the group morphed into the large scale terrorist army that it is now within the framework of the instability that the Syria proxy war has caused.  It was also possible for I.S.I.S. to make the surprisingly fast gains that it has in Iraq, thanks to the country being devastated by the U.S. invasion under former President George W. Bush.

But to hear Hillary explain it, it’s partly Obama’s fault for leaving a “power vacuum” in Iraq by failing to leave a residual force, and possibly Obama’s fault for not arming the right rebels in Syria sooner, as was her wish, along with McCain and Graham.

First of all, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was negotiated by Bush before Obama took office.  On top of that fact, the Obama Administration wanted to leave a residual force as opposed to a complete withdrawal, but the Iraqi’s refused to agree to that on terms that were acceptable to the U.S.

Second of all, this “power vacuum” in Iraq that Hillary Clinton has the gall to blame on President Obama, was created by the U.S. invasion, which SHE, then Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, voted for.  It was Senator Obama’s public stand against the Iraq War that first got him noticed by the liberal base that ultimately propelled him into the presidency.  It was clear at the time, especially to elected U.S. officials, that “weapons of mass destruction” was a hyped up excuse to go to war.  It was also clear, with the evidence made public at the time, that this charge to invade Iraq was built upon false pretenses.  It didn’t take a senator with access to classified intelligence to smell bullshit when Colin Powell gave Bush’s last push for the invasion to the United Nations, in a speech with such evidence as cartoon renderings of “mobile labs” that Saddam Hussein supposedly had all over Iraq, or the fake bottle of Anthrax that Mr. Powell held up in his hands – anthrax that was already known at the time to have not come from Iraq, and most likely to have come from someone in the U.S. government, as it was weapons grade anthrax of a formula or strain that we had created before.

Cartoon renderings, fake anthrax not believed to have come from Iraq, and tales of Saddam’s attempts to acquire nuclear bomb material – also publicly debunked in the press at the time – all obviously smoke and mirrors and a false pretext for war with Iraq for even the casual observer.

And Hillary Clinton voted “yes” for that invasion, which as we now know for certain, was based on deliberate lies about weapons of mass destruction.  We also know that we were not greeted as “liberators” as we were told we would be, and we know that the war didn’t pay for itself through increased Iraq oil production, as we were also told at the time.

We do know that Iraq is now a devastated country, with hundreds of thousands of citizens killed, millions displaced, and now partly under control from a terrorist group, because George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and the other warmongers in Washington, voted “yes” for an invasion sold on lies, and later revised as “democracy promotion” when the lies became completely exposed.

Of course, Hillary blames her support for the Iraq war on faulty intelligence and misleading from the Bush Administration, and now blames the “power vacuum” on President Obama.  Could there be any more evidence that she is a liar, a hypocrite,  and a warmonger?

Only true fans of Hillary Clinton, with willful ignorance, could claim otherwise.  Here is the link to the interview in The Atlantic, and it should be read by anyone not choosing deliberate ignorance:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/

Hillary Clinton also says that she would be a much tougher negotiator with Iran over its nuclear program, going so for as to say she doesn’t think Iran should be allowed to enrich any uranium.  This is a completely unrealistic goal, if not an outright blowing of hot air on Mrs. Clinton’s part.  The Iranian people and their economy have been suffering a long time now under sanctions that were strengthened by the Obama Administration, but some of these sanctions have been temporarily eased with direct negotiations now going on between the U.S. and Iran – historical, given the decades old silent and subversion treatment waged by the U.S. as punishment for the Iranians overthrowing our previously installed dictator, and their desire to control their own resources.  There are many in congress who are fighting the president on the easing of these sanctions, and on the negotiations, undermining chance for a lasting peace with Iran.  Our “ally” Israel, with “Bibi” Netanyahu taking to U.S. Sunday morning talk programs, has also been publically fighting Obama’s negotiations with Iran, as well as courting individual elected U.S. officials behind the president’s back, undermining his Administration’s efforts.  Hillary is adding to their chorus and undermining by her tough talk about how she’d do it differently than the current president she just recently worked for.

Where does Hillary’s allegiance lie?  She has gone out of her way recently in The Atlantic interview and elsewhere, to voice her strong support of Israel and its murderous attacks on the people in Gaza.  She has gone so far out of the way to show her unflinching support to Netanyahu’s right wing government, that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial titled “Israel’s new lawyer:  Hillary Clinton” on August 11th.  The author went on to detail how inaccurate, and misleading, many of her statements were in The Atlantic interview, point for point, asserting that “She sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through Bibi’s eyes, which could be the reason she gets so much wrong.”  The editorial doesn’t flat out call her a liar, but it does break down many of Clinton’s claims about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one by one, providing evidence of either her inaccurate statement of facts, or omission of facts.  The editorial is also worth reading, as the evidence compared to her rhetoric, don’t hold water.  Here is the link to that article, although the entire text may not be available now without a subscription:

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.610007

The liberal online U.S. newspaper The Huffington Post recently published an article titled “Hillary Clinton Twists Herself in Knots to Avoid Blaming Israel for U.N. Bombing.” This article also quotes Hillary from The Atlantic interview, pointing out her one sided and hypocritical defense of Israel’s actions in Gaza that have now claimed over 2000 Palestinian lives, mostly civilians.  Hard to argue with that author’s logic as well, the article is also worth reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/hillary-clinton-israel-gaza-school-bombing_n_5672881.html

As I stated in my last blog, criticism of Israel is often mischaracterized as “anti-Semitism” for the purposes of vilifying the critic of Israeli state policy, and to intimidate others from speaking out against Israel’s actions.  To defame critics, reporters, academics, or policy makers as anti-Semites when they disagree with the right wing of Israel’s government or its allies in Washington, is a shameful tactic, gleefully embraced Hillary Clinton, of course.  When questioned in The Atlantic interview about the world’s condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza and protests against them in Europe, Hillary responded with ” “You can’t ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what’s going on in Europe today. There are more demonstrations against Israel by an exponential amount than there are against Russia seizing part of Ukraine and shooting down a civilian airliner.”  When she says “you can’t ever discount anti-Semitism” she is in essence saying that she will always blame criticism on anti-Semitism.  Doing so allows her to overlook a preponderance of evidence supporting the criticism, and fill it in with generic praise for how Israel is a great “democracy” in the Middle East, and dear friend of the United States, it’s backer.

Hillary is also being more honest that she probably intends to be lately, making several statements to various reporters and audiences that reveal her love of the power of propaganda over reality.  She recently gave a speech in support of genetically modified foods at the BIO International Convention- not surprising as she has long been an advocate for the industry –  but what stands out most is that she told the industry leaders that they needed to change their “vocabulary” about how they talk about their products, to change public perception.  She had a similar answer for Jon Stewart in a recent The Daily Show interview on foreign policy, by saying “We have not been telling our story very well. We do have a great story. We are not perfect by any means, but we have a great story about human freedom, human rights, human opportunity, and let’s get back to telling it, to ourselves first and foremost, and believing it about ourselves and then taking that around the world. That’s what we should be standing for.”  Hillary is big on language over substance and truth, whether she’s defending the likes of companies like Monsanto who are  genetically modifying our food supply and attempting to monopolize crop seeds, or when she is re-writing our own history that we should be “believing it ourselves” before telling other countries we are bombing or supporting brutal dictatorships how great we are.  In response to bloody scenes and photos coming out of Gaza, she told The Atlantic:  “What you see is largely what Hamas invites and permits Western journalists to report on from Gaza. It’s the old PR problem that Israel has.”

Yes, “the old PR problem.”

Facts are unimportant to Hillary Clinton, but her arrogant dismissal of the truth should outrage anyone supporting her or thinking of supporting her.  Democrats already on the bandwagon for Hillary 2016 need to wake up and read a small dose of reality. Informed voters, sick of the status quo of corporate owned America and the giant Military Industrial Complex, need to speak out now against Hillary Clinton, before her PR machine gets in full swing, drowning out the voices of numerous, better qualified candidates for the presidency.

 

 

 

Hell on Earth: Israel Continues Slaughter in Gaza, U.S. Bombs Iraq Again

GazaThe current score of Israel’s “right to defend itself:”  Over 1,800 dead Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, and 10,000 more wounded.  Israel’s loss:  slightly over 60 killed, all soldiers except for 3.  The world condemns Israel’s actions, but as usual, it’s backer, enabler and partner in international crimes, the United States government, continues it’s sole support of it’s favorite client state.  All under the false claim of “self defense.”

President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the fourth consecutive U.S. president to bomb the country of Iraq.  But, he assures us, the U.S. cannot sit by and allow the potential slaughter and starvation of 40,000 refugees in the mountains near Kurdistan, when we have the “unique” capability to do something about it, such as “humanitarian” air drops of food and water from our air force; and of course, along side this noble concern for innocent civilians that our leaders love to profess as a pretext for war, we will be bombing the militant group that is taking over large swaths of Iraq, I.S.I.S.

For the casual observer in America, nothing sounds unreasonable about “Israel’s right to defend itself,” which is generally understood to be a universal norm – everyone has a right of self-defense.   Also, who would be against our superior air force dropping food and water to 40,000 refugees stranded in the mountains?  And if we have to bomb some radicals who have invaded the country of Iraq that we and our coalition of lapdogs (mostly Britain) broke in the first place, Mr. Obama assures us that we are not going back into war with Iraq, and there will be no U.S. ground troops.

Looking underneath the official rhetoric and propaganda of U.S. officials, and it’s defender of the false narrative of our nobility towards innocents, the mainstream press  – facts quickly arise that should leave no doubt that the U.S. government, regardless of what president is in power, does not care in the least about the suffering and murder of millions of innocent civilians world wide, unless they can be used as an excuse for war. Let’s consider just a few examples of many, starting in Iraq and Iran.

In 1953 the CIA orchestrated a coup to overthrow the parliamentary government of Iran and replaced it with one of the world’s most notorious dictators (there are a few more though, also supported by the U.S.) the Shah.  Until 1979. the Shah acted as a puppet of the United States, allowing us and other western companies to go in and exploit Iran’s oil.  Prior to the Shaw, the people of Iran’s government had the audacity of nationalizing their countries oil supply, instead of realizing they were all just living on top of our oil.  The Shaw tortured and murdered thousands of Iranian citizens, keeping them in line to serve their true purpose, the enrichment of Western powers.  This eventually led to the 1979 Iranian revolution when the Shaw was finally overthrown.  And since then, Iran has been considered and treated like one of the United State’s and Israel’s worst enemies, and presented as a danger to the world.

After the Shaw was overthrown and the U.S. kicked out of Iran, the U.S. government moved quickly to support another murderous tyrant, Saddam Hussein.  The U.S. officials were aware of course of Saddam’s crimes and cruelty towards his own people, and supported him with money and military supplies.  The U.S. became his backer against his bloody eight year war with Iran.  The incident of the Butcher of Baghdad using chemical warfare to “gas his own people” the Kurds, was condemned by most of the world and the United Nations at the time, but U.S. officials in Washington made sure that no punitive action was taken against him.  Afterall, we gave him those chemical weapons to kill Iranians with, so whats a few dead innocent men women and children in northern Iraq?  It was something to be swept under the rug, and only condemned years later by U.S. officials as a pretext to overthrow Saddam and invade Iraq when he fell out of favor with Washington.  Then the narrative became “he gassed his own people.”  He’s a murderer, a torturer, our leaders couldn’t say enough bad things about him.  And it is true that he was a torturer and murderer and cruel tyrant, but it is also true that the same U.S. leaders knew this to be the case all along when he was a tyrant serving our needs.  He only officially became evil when Washington could no longer control him.  Morality never played a part in U.S. treatment of him.

Concern for the citizens of Iraq was also not deemed morally important by the Clinton administration, when it forced sanctions on Iraq that are known to have killed over half a million Iraqi children.  When Madeline Albright, U.N. ambassador at the time who later became Secretary of State, was asked about the half million plus children of Iraq that were killed by Clinton’s U.S. sanctions, she said said it was worth the price. Here is a Youtube link of her statements in the interview, in which she declared that half a million innocent children killed through U.S. sanctions was worth the price of punishing Saddam, copy and paste in your browser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4PgpbQfxgo

The number of civilians killed in Iraq since George W. Bush and his cowboys invaded it under the lies of “weapons of mass destruction” is hard to come by, but numerous studies point to total deaths from this most recent war in Iraq between 150 thousand and 400 thousand, and 1.3 million refugees from this country of 30 million, fleeing the liberating effects of the U.S.’s invasion, which was later revised as “promoting democracy” when no weapons of mass destruction were found.  There are also studies showing there are now 4.5 million orphans in Iraq, with 600 thousand of them homeless.  The following is a link to the respected MIT’s website, which offers a more complete picture of the human tragedy caused in Iraq by U.S. led wars, figures not often reported in the mainstream U.S. press and dialogue, and offers a sobering amount of evidence to debunk President Obama’s proclamation of the U.S. government’s concern for civilians.  I strongly recommend you take a look at the statitistics on this site if you are interested in a true picture of the cost of war on the people we waged it against:

http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/

It is also worth noting, though it is not often noted by American political pundits on the Propaganda News Channels, that the United States and it’s Arab allies along with England and a few Western culprits, have been supporting the arming of the Islamic extremists that have now blossomed and evolved into our current Frankenstein’s monster in Iraq, ISIS, for over two years in the “civil war” in Syria for the purpose of overthrowing Syria’s leader Assad, to be replaced by presumably, someone more agreeable with our interests there.  There have been well over 100 thousand civilians killed in this conflict, and over a million refugees fleeing the country’s war.  I haven’t heard about any air-lifts of supplies to these refugees, or much concern expressed about their well being; however, you may recall last year that Obama almost bombed Syria because of our love of Syria’s innocents who were killed in chemical attacks in the ongoing conflict.  One positive result of this, however, was Assad’s agreement to hand over his chemical weapons for destruction, and this has largely been carried out.  Other nations in the region still maintain their illegal chemical weapons, such as Israel.

Watching Obama’s first announcements the other night about our new “humanitarian” effort and bombing in Iraq, was like watching a soundbite of his announcement of our bombing and participation of the overthrow of Gaddafi of Libya in 2011.  His words sounded almost exactly like I remember his words describing our motives for helping our allies Britain and France bomb them into a new government.  It was because if we din’t, our conscience would have  be bothered by the slaughter of civilians in Libya that would result from our lack of inaction.  We are just trying to help out and be the good guy.

And speaking of our concern for the slaughter of civilians in the Gaza strip by the U.S. fed war machine of Israel, well, “Israel has a right to defend herself.”  Apparently though, the Palestinians, who have for over 30 year been illegally occupied, murdered, tortured, and starved of both food and water supplies on an ongoing basis by the Israelis, with U.S. backing in direct monetary and military aid.  The U.S. has of course for years claimed to want a peaceful solution, a solution for which there is an international consensus that involves a two state solution of Israel and Palestine, with Israel withdrawing its illegally occupied Palestinian territory to the 1967 borders, with some minor adjustments.  Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and brutal oppression of it’s people is recognized by almost the entire world and United Nations body to be illegal and immoral, but that means little when the world’s one super power continues to obstruct the peace process, even as it pretends in public to be a fair and concerned broker.

Hamas, whom the U.S. government, U.S. press, and Israel often refer to as terrorists, was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in 2007 over the U.S. and Israel’s preferred candidates of the Palestinian Authority.  Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s leading intellectuals, and expert and critic on U.S. foreign policy, characterises the blockade on Gaza that resulted after this election as the U.S. and Israel’s punishment of the Palestinian people for voting the wrong way.  For the past 7 years, the people living in Gaza have been in a virtual land prison, blocked in by an ocean blockade, and land blockade by Israel and Egypt.  The details and human cost of this blockade are well documented, and today even the king of Propaganda News, Fox, actually posted a story about the blockade in Gaza which is worth reading, especially by  conservative readers suspicious of the “liberal” media.  The article does distort some of what prompted the blockade, by citing Hamas’s “violent takeover” of Gaza in 2007, which was actually the result of a mini-civil war among the Palestinians, stoked covertly by the United States after Hamas won in a free and fair election, the results of which were unacceptable to the U.S. and Israel.

Since Fox rarely reports facts it doesn’t like, this article is worth reading.  Here is that link:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/08/11/7-year-old-border-blockade-imposed-to-isolate-hamas-has-hurt-gaza-18-million/

As in most of these exercises in self defense, Israel always manages to bomb hospitals and schools sheltering civilians from the violence, with the occasion member of the press killed as well, but always called an “accident” by Israel, and then blamed on Hamas for using “human shields.”  It is amazing with all of Israel’s high tech weaponry and “surgical” strikes. that they continue to mistake United Nations schools in Gaza as shields for Hamas, the people’s choice of representation against the decades long occupation and siege.

Of course, there is the usual rhetoric from the propaganda peanut gallery that any criticism of U.S. foreign policy is committed by haters of freedom and un-patriotic Americans, and that any criticism of Israeli crimes are anti-semitic.  But any reasonable person, looking at the evidence with objective eyes, will most likely not approve of the U.S. support for brutal dictators worldwide, and it’s support of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.  These charges are meant to tarnish the critics and quell debate instead of addressing the issues, just as weapons of mass destruction and the humanitarian efforts of bombing the enemy are meant to rally the blind to continue their support through taxes and volunteer citizens of it’s military.

The rest of the world is well aware the U.S.’s one sided support for Israel’s atrocities, but it appears that more Americans are paying attention to the current crisis, as images and videos of bloody children and urban destruction on an apocalyptic scale are making it’s way into their consciousness.  If the American people begin to recognize the scale of suffering and violence being brought upon the people of Gaza, our government might see a reason to be more assertive than it has been in forcing a peace deal between Israel and Palestine with a two state solution.  But as of now, Israel continues to illegally settle new areas of Palestinian territories, and further carve up the Palestinian territory with it’s “security wall” that is further eroding the possibility of a two state solution, cutting off and isolating large Palestinian populations from each other.  I do believe that Americans in general are good people at heart and that if they become fully aware of it’s government’s near unflinching support of warmongering Israeli policies, it will demand change.  But that’s audacious hope, I do realize.

 

 

 

Suffer the Children

Refugees

The growing humanitarian crisis at the United States and Mexico border which has seen over fifty thousand child refugees fleeing from Central America recently, has brought out the worst in America’s racists and it’s self serving, lying politicians.  Last week’s angry mob of protesters in Texas who blocked the buses carrying hundreds of these children to a different holding center for processing, are a stunning and graphic example of the racism and fear residing in the hearts of many of the so-called “patriotic” God and guns bunch of Americans.  The flat out lies that some republican politicians like Texas Senator and Creep Poster Child, Ted Cruz, are telling, with the aiding and abetting of right-wing media propagandists like Sean Hannity of Fox, are so transparently false I have to wonder how they can tell them with such straight faces.

These republicans and pundits know they are lying, they are thoughtfully crafted lies, but they are lies so easily disputed with widely known and easily understood facts, that even these sociopathic liars and actors must experience some embarrassment off camera when they have to speak with anyone personally who knows better.  I have to wonder if the Texas Jack-Ass, Governor Rick Perry, went shopping for more new eye glasses to make him look intelligent, before he greeted President Obama this past Thursday on the tarmac in Texas. after talking such utter bullshit and non-sense on the television talk shows the week before.  Rick Perry had said that “I hate to sound conspiratorial” as a preface to his conspiracy theory (lie he knows to be a lie) that the Obama Administration was either complicit or actually had planned the refugee crisis.  He defended this ridiculous statement later on when pressed by reporters.  And then he had to actually meet with and work with the president on Thursday.  Was he embarrassed to see Mr. Obama in person after a week of talking shit?  I don’t see how he couldn’t be, and I don’t see how Obama refrained from greeting him in private with “so, you dumb shit, two-bit hack from Texas, tell me about how I planned all this, or how I was complicit in it.”

Let’s go over the basic facts first:  The fifty-thousand plus children being apprehended at our border trying to enter the United States began in large numbers in January of this year.  Most of these children are from three Central America countries, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.   Most, particularly those coming from Honduras, are believed to be fleeing extreme gang violence and lawlessness in their countries.  While republican liars and the ignorant are harping about how Obama encouraged this, and all that other non-sense along the same vein, the fact is that how these children are being dealt with at the current moment by the Obama Administration is in accordance with a bi-partisan law signed by former President George W. Bush in 2008.

This law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2008, was meant to address the tragedy of child sex trafficking.  Basically, the law requires that any unaccompanied children from a country other than Canada or Mexico, go through a special process before they are immediately deported to their country of origin, until their circumstances are understood.  It grants them rights to an immigration hearing with an advocate, access to council, and then placement or care overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.  More detail about the histiory of this law can be found in this New York Times article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/immigrant-surge-rooted-in-law-to-curb-child-trafficking.html

It has not been mentioned in any television network news program – at least to my knowledge – any context about the United States’s history or relationship with these Central American countries.  The context I am referring to is decades of U.S. military intervention and interference in these countries, our backing of their brutal dictators, our training of torture and brutality to their police and military forces.  Details are too numerous and complex to be covered in this blog, but it should be noted that these three countries, along with most of Latin America’s poorest and crime ridden countries, have received the most U.S. intervention into it’s affairs over the past few decades, leaving these countries in utter destruction.  The reality is that the United States has been both a direct and indirect cause of much of these countries’ suffering, but you will not even hear that uttered in the public debate here.  It’s assumed that the United States is the best country in the history of the world, and that these other countries don’t have their act together because they are inferior, and not our problem or responsibility.

This background history, cloaked in near invisibility to the majority of Americans, plays a part in the racist, anti-immigration rhetoric and fear that infect and motivate the good, gun-toting, freedom lovin’ Americans to take to the streets to stop the busses full of children from even being processed by U.S. authorities in accordance to the 2008 law.   These buses were filled with real human beings, children, who had travelled hundreds of miles through dangerous circumstances, fleeing for their life from violence and depravity in their home country.  The protesters were real Americans, acting as if they were expelling an invading army of terrorist, freedom haters.  Disease was the justification from many of these protesters.  They were protecting their children from third world diseases.  Signs reading “go home” and other compassionate slogans were everywhere in these mobs, as was the red, white and blue American flags being waved.  Regardless of whether or not the children on the buses could read or speak English, it is a safe bet that they understood the gist: we Americans hate you, fear you, go away, we don’t care what you are returned to.

Another great article in the New York Times offers an illuminating portrait of the human tragedies these children are fleeing from, and I highly recommend you read it, please copy and paste the link into your browser:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/world/americas/fleeing-gangs-children-head-to-us-border.html

And now, some of the obvious lies and bullshit coming out of some republicans and right-wing pundits:

Senator Creep Ted Cruz of Texas:  “…the president is right that it’s a humanitarian crisis, but it is a crisis of his own creation. This is the direct consequence of President Obama’s lawlessness.”

Speaker of the House of Clowns, John Boehner: “This is a problem of the president’s own making. He’s been president for five and a half years. When’s he going to take responsibility for something?”

Senator Fish Face from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, in response to Mr. Obama’s request of emergency funding of 3.7 billion dollars to deal with the crisis:  republicans wouldn’t be giving the president the money “that would allow him to sustain his current failed policy.”

Senator Redneck Richard C. Shelby of Alabama:   “I personally have no confidence that pouring billions of dollars into our current immigration system will solve the crisis. I think we have to get serious about enforcing our current laws and protecting our border if we’re ever to get different results.”

High paid Fox Propaganda Asshole Sean Hannity:  “This is getting out of hand, all because the government refuses to send people home. I’m not sure why we refuse to enforce our laws.”

It’s pathetic that the above are actual policy makers and opinion shapers.  Not a shred of truth in their soundbites, and they know it.  They are merely exploiting the fear and dislike of immigrants, and for what?  The republican party frequently talks about how much they love children, must protect children, the “sanctity of life” and how “every life is precious.”  In the last presidential republican primaries, Governor Rick Perry, in response to criticism of Texas allowing “illegal” immigrants to attend college in Texas with in-state tuition rates and tax payer funded breaks, said of his opponents and critics on the issue: “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,”

I would add to that, Governor Perry, that if you can now stand up there and tell the lies you are currently telling, using the children of the humanitarian crisis on your state’s border as political pawns, after having previously accused opponents of yours of having no heart for their feverish anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, that you sir, have no heart, no shame, and of course as you have already proven, no brain – no matter how many eye glasses you put on your phony face in hopes of looking smart.

There needs to be real immigration reform in this country, but it needs to be based on reality and not racism and fear mongering.  There is an immigration reform bill already passed in the Senate, but Speaker and Weeper John Boehner will not even bring it to a vote on the House floor.  President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any of his predecessors, and has poured more money and manpower into the further militarization of the border than previous administrations as well.  But any serious talk or effort at immigration policy is being sabotaged and blocked by the republican party, with their idiots often chanting “we have to secure our border first,” even though it is more secure than it ever has been, and that illegal immigration has subsided significantly the past few years.  And now, these same clowns, crying “lawlessness” and demanding that President Obama do something, are blocking his efforts to do just that.  And they are doing it publicly, barely challenged by the mainstream media.  It’s pathetic, and routine here, but it is the children and families of these children that will suffer.

Hope in a Sea of Injustice

 

fast food strikeIt doesn’t take much for a thinking person to follow the news and become angry and feeling hopeless, but yesterday’s world wide, fast food worker strike and a couple of other things have left me feeling some of what Brand Obama promised but disappointed us with:  Hope.

As a few good policy makers continue to push for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, and as a majority of Americans support it, and as it continues to fail to pass because of republican obstructionism, the new labor movement developing among fast food workers and retail workers is a refreshing and welcome development in our corrupted democracy.   I have bemoaned over and over how our publicly elected officials refuse to side with the majority of citizens one many key issues, like Social Security, healthcare, minimum wage, unemployment benefits, food assistance to the poor, net neutrality, the subsidizing of Big Oil companies who are posting their largest profits ever, the pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly protections, campaign finance, the size of the military budget. . . the list goes on.  There are many, many issues like these that a clear majority of Americans agree upon, yet the opposite is carried out by our voted-for lawmakers and leaders.  But you’ve heard that rant before.  Now, it appears that this sentiment and resentment has grown enough to propel a true democratic push in our country for a livable wage and a more egalitarian society.

Fast food workers walking off the job in protest of poverty wages and demands for 15 dollars an hour began as a movement in New York City about eighteen months ago, has grown in size, scope, and support.  Similar walk of the jobs in protests have also been carried out by retail workers recently during the holiday season.  Yesterday, the labor movement of fast food workers striking – with no protection of not being fired by their slave-master corporations – went global.  Organization of the mass protests were aided by different labor groups, such as Service Employees International Union and others.  The organizers say that the strikes were carried out in 150 American cities, and in 80 cities in other countries.

These protests remind me of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Together, these growing movements show that enough of the general population is catching on the fact that the wealth they help to create by working for the corporations has not “trickled” down into their pockets, and that simply voting for democrats over republicans is not going to change the balance of power enough.  A population that has grown weary and cynical of what their senators and representatives promise about jobs and the American dream, has begun to move from apathy to action.  These public displays of protests of wage unfairness and poor working conditions in a stagnant, increasingly service based economy offer hope that after years of declining wages and dwindling benefits and job insecurity, the workers and creators of the wealth want a more fair share of the pie.

A 2013 University of Berkley study found that a stunning 52 percent of families with fast food workers are on some form of public assistance.  The study can be found with this link  http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/publiccosts/fastfoodpovertywages.shtml

and it’s findings may surprise you as to how badly honest, working Americans are being abused by the so-called “job creators.”  As I have pointed out before, that a wealthy, gigantic corporation like McDonald’s or Walmart that pays it’s employees so little that many of them end up still in poverty and in need of food stamps or healthcare, speaks volumes about the concentration of power that has occurred among the uber wealthy.  Billion dollar corporations are in practice having their profits subsidized by tax payers in the form of some type of government assistance.  At the same time, numerous American corporations such as General Electric, don’t pay any federal taxes.  And at the same time, the wealthy tyrants at the top have successfully waged a propaganda campaign in this country that has created an outright hostility and suspicion towards the poor.  How many times have you heard an average, working American ask the question “why should I have to work hard all week to give some of my money to someone who doesn’t wanna work?”  The way to start answering that question is to point out that many of these people in need of government assistance are working, for giant, profitable corporations that thank you very much for your subsidy to their slave labor.

Another good way combat the sneaky and misleading ways that the argument against raising the minimum wage is carried out by business and right wing media outlet propagandists, is to email or post on Facebook or other social media, this link, which shows you the demographics of low paid workers, and who and how many would be effected by raising the minimum wage.  One common trick that has been employed is to mislead the public into thinking that an overwhelming majority of minimum wage workers are simply teenagers earning extra spending money.  They do this by citing various numbers about minimum wage workers, but they do this without telling you the fast food industry has a median pay of $8.69 an hour, a paltry amount above the minimum wage, technically.  But technically, it’s still a poverty wage and the total number of low wage workers that would experience an increase by simply raising the minimum wage to the proposed $10.10 an hour.  This amount is still too low, in my opinion, especially taking into account the lack of benefits at most of these low paying jobs.  Here is the link for you to copy, past and then spread to your friends and neighbors:  http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-older-88-percent-workers-benefit/#.U2U45NHfyKo.facebook

I would personally like to see a world wide boycott on an agreed upon day of all fast food chains, and Walmart.  Boycotts have a history of not working, but it would be a powerful message, and the only one the bean counter CEO’s understand – loss of money – if everyone chose on the same day to absolutely not give money or business to any of these greedy companies.  This may be a pipe dream, but the courage of these workers, the impressive organization and it’s global reach, and the spotlight it is shining on unfair labor practices have made. . . hopeful, dare I say.

Other good news:  Senate majority leader Harry Reid and a few other Democrats are proposing a constitutional ammendment that would give congress the power to regulate campaign finance, the form of legalized bribery that our divided Supreme Court as recently ruled as “free speech.”  Given the floodgates that the Supreme Court’s undoing of decades of congressional oversight (weak as it is) over big money donations to campaigns has unleashed, this constitutional amendment is necessary, and needed immediately.  I can’t imagine the majority of Americans would object to this, but I can imagine that enough corrupted politicians will make sure and kill any chance of it – their corporate puppet masters will demand it. But the fact that it is being proposed in real legislation, is a positive sign that even weak kneed democrats are realizing the dire straights our democracy is headed towards with billionaires now allowed to donate unlimited amounts of “free speech” to politicians to serve their needs.

And another hopeful sign occurred last night on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” when Ed Schultz interviewed a young college millenial, a democrat and campaign organizer, who, wearing a shirt that proudly displayed her political party, pushed back on Mr. Shultz’s framing of a question that conveyed the extremely annoying notion that Hillary Clinton will be the democratic nominee, pointing to Elizabeth Warren as another woman worth a serious look out, and that milleanial’s are already growing tired and catching on to politics as usual.  Obama had more charisma than Hillary did, and this certainly helped him pull out that upset in the primaries then, and Elizabeth Warren has more charisma and something even more valuable: a backbone.

Maybe there is hope that enough Americans are waking up to the obvious injustices and doing something about it.

 

 

 

Reject the Dynasties

Warren

Aside from issues like refusal to raise the minimum wage to a livable wage, or failure of almost half of the states to accept the federal government’s free expansion of Medicaid to give millions of more poor people health care, or President Obama’s behind the scenes, secretive effort to impose another “free trade” agreement on our country and others in the Pacific, aside from all this. .  . what really burns my ass and sickens me right now is the sense of hopelessness I feel when the seemingly inevitable match-up between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush for the presidential election of 2016 is brought up.

It’s bad enough that even before the mid-term elections, there is so much early speculation of who will run for president in 2016.  Part of what is driving this, besides a pathetic, mainstream media infra-structure engaged in continual propaganda, is what could be termed America’s infatuation with celebrity and dynasty.  If Hillary Clinton, wife and first lady of former popular President Bill Clinton, were not preparing for a likely run; and if Jeb Bush,  former governor of Florida and more importantly, brother to George W. Bush, America’s former most un-popular president in modern times, and son to the first President Geogre H.W. Bush. .  . perhaps there would not be as much interest in the 2016 contest.  Americans may not really care all that much about 2016 yet, but if it involves all the superficial trappings of a bad reality tv show, then by all means, let CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and all the rest beat the horse into the ground.  And in the process, beat it into our heads that our political oligarchy has already settled on a handful of puppets to serve them in the future.

Polls indicate that American voters continue to feel more cynical and apathetic than ever.  “Hope and Change” worked good for one group since President Obama took the helm at the start of the Great Recession:  the Wall Street financial industry.  They are doing fantastic.  Their architects of the economic melt down were appointed high level positions in the Obama Administration, or received huge bonuses after the bail outs.  Their stocks are soaring.  The financial regulation that was threatened was watered down to a level tolerable to them, and the too big to fails are even bigger now.   And they have no need to fear any politician reigning them in too much, so long as one of their two puppets, Hillary or Jeb, gets the next presidency.  But Americans DO have a choice to not accept this, they just have to be willing to look a little harder and a little more closely at alternative choices, and reject the media’s narrative and guidance towards more of the status quo.

I talk with many people on a regular business who feel passionate about the state of our society, our laws, our economy, our politics, but who feel utterly hopeless or cynical that any solution is possible politically.  There is good reason for this, as what our government does is not reflective of what the majority of our country wants, no matter how we vote.  Polls show most Americans think that our political system serves a very small group of wealthy, special interests, and they are absolutely right.  But what we must not forget is that the corporate interests that have currently hijacked our democracy, still do so with our votes, for the most part (although the Supreme Court has been known to install a president who did not win the popular vote or the Florida recount).

We know how they do this.  The mega corporations, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, banks, weapons of war manufacturers, insurance companies, tele-communications companies, and their incestuous lot of billionaires holding multiple positions of power within these industries, throw hundreds of millions of dollars towards the candidates’ campaigns and then their lobbyists to shape government policy to enrich  themselves even further.   All this money is spent to buy our votes.

Let’s stop giving it to them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve experienced the frustration before of supporting a third party candidate for president, from Ross Perot to Ralph Nader.  I’ve now twice experienced the letdown of having voted for a winning mainstream candidate – Barack Obama – and watching him not come close to living up to his rhetoric.  I voted for Obama because it seemed to me at the time that the American people were never going to support anyone other than either the republican nominee or the democratic nominee.  Despite American’s cynicism towards the corrupt two party system, American voters seem paralyzed to vote for a third choice.  Having been made so afraid of the other side winning, most voters have become conditioned that voting for anyone other than the two parties is wasting their vote.  I was blamed by many democrat voters for getting George W. Dipshit elected over Al Gore by voting for Nader.  The undemocratic electoral college that allowed the popular vote candidate to lose, the Supreme Court who stopped the Florida recount that Gore was later shown by independent analysis to have won, were not blamed.  Voting for someone like Nader, outside of the two corrupt parties, was to blame, according to the mainstream media propagandists, and accepted by the majority of voters.

It would now seem that after the disappointment of Obama’s performance vs. the expectations, and the already shaping up contest between the  two old political dynasties of Clinton and Bush, and with the Supreme Court now affirming that cash is equal to free speech, that now is the time for voters to say enough is enough, and soundly reject anymore business appointed puppets like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.  I’m not saying we have to have a third party candidate to win the presidency, but we do have to have the courage and good sense to elect someone who is not completely bought out by the big money interests that rule our country.  This will mean seeing through the propaganda and cosmetic political talk, and not accepting that if Hillary wants the nominee, it’s “her turn.”  It’s been the super rich’s turn for a long time, that’s why we have the least egalitarian society since before the Great Depression.

There are good democrats in the wing that I think would make a fantastic president, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren.  But it is unlikely she or anyone else will challenge Hillary if she choses to run, as the big money is already behind her and it would be an uphill battle.  It is understood that the candidate with the most money usually wins, and Elizabeth Warren threatens the financial industry’s monopoly over our economic policy.  Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is considering a run and would make an excellent choice, but cosmetically the media will tell people how he is not electable, he isn’t cookie sheet cutout enough looking.  Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio would be a good choice, but cosmetically speaking, he sounds as if he’s gargling glass when he speaks, so he will deemed un-electable too by the media.  The media, and the massively deceptive marketers of the campaigns will instead shape meaningless images for us to vote on, based on phony personality and dynasty infatuation.

Please, America, let’s vote issues and the people behind them, and not live out a self-fulfilling prophecy of electing an appointed oligarch like the war mongering, power hungry, corporate queen Hillary Clinton, or the chosen heir of Big Oil and war, Jeb Bush.  I can’t take it anymore.